For most users, we recommend installing the
Haskell
Platform instead of GHC. The current Haskell Platform release
includes a recent GHC release as well as some other tools (such as
cabal), and a larger set of libraries that are known to work
together.

Bundled packages and cabal-install

GHC 7.6.2 only works with Cabal-install
version 0.8 or later. Please upgrade if you have an older
version of cabal-install.

Contents

GHC is packaged for a number of operating systems and
distributions. While they may lag behind the latest GHC
release, advantages such as dependency checking and ease of
uninstallation mean we recommend using them anyway, unless
you have a particular need for new features or bug fixes.

The OS-specific packages (eg. RPMs on Linux) are generally a better
bet than the vanilla .tar.bz2 binary bundles, because they
will check for dependencies and allow the package to be uninstalled at
a later date.

However, if you don't have permission to install binaries on your
system, or you want to install somewhere other than the default place
(/usr or /usr/local on a Unix system), then you'll
need to use a .tar.bz2 binary bundle.

NOTE: If you have too old a version of libc, then you will get an
error like "floating point exception" from the binaries in these
bindists. You will need to either upgrade your libc (we're not sure
what the minimum version required is), or use a binary package built
for your distribution instead.

Linux (x86_64)

Generic amd64 Linux. This is a complete build, including
interactive system, profiling libraries and documentation.
It was made on a Debian 6.0 "squeeze" system and requires
libgmp.so.3.

NOTE: If you have too old a version of libc, then you will get an
error like "floating point exception" from the binaries in these
bindists. You will need to either upgrade your libc (we're not sure
what the minimum version required is), or use a binary package built
for your distribution instead.

Windows 64bit (x86_64)

MacOS X (x86)

This is a bindist for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
The package requires Xcode 4.1 (in particular, the "Unix Development
Support") to be already installed.
You can find Xcode at
http://developer.apple.com/
(or you may have a new enough version on your OS X installation DVD).

MacOS X (x86_64)

This is a bindist for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
The package requires Xcode 4.1 (in particular, the "Unix Development
Support") to be already installed.
You can find Xcode at
http://developer.apple.com/
(or you may have a new enough version on your OS X installation DVD).

FreeBSD (x86)

Gabor PALI
has provided binary distribution tarballs for FreeBSD.
These are complete builds, including interactive system, profiling
libraries and documentation.

Note: These are not the same as the lang/ghc port. The packages require
ports math/gmp, converters/libiconv, devel/gmake, lang/perl5.12,
devel/autoconf to be already installed. For installation, set your
prefix by "./configure --prefix=${PREFIX}" and install the binaries by
"gmake install". For running the testsuite you will need the
lang/python port as well.

FreeBSD (x86_64)

Gabor PALI
has provided binary distribution tarballs for FreeBSD.
These are complete builds, including interactive system, profiling
libraries and documentation.

Note: These are not the same as the lang/ghc port. The packages require
ports math/gmp, converters/libiconv, devel/gmake, lang/perl5.12,
devel/autoconf to be already installed. For installation, set your
prefix by "./configure --prefix=${PREFIX}" and install the binaries by
"gmake install". For running the testsuite you will need the
lang/python port as well.

The source distribution needs an installed GHC (version 7.0 at
least). If your platform isn't currently supported with a binary
distribution, then you'll need to consult the section on Porting GHC
in the Building Guide.